Settling
by cruelfeline
Summary: So many new developments. So many reactions. So many changes to accept... for everyone. Set after the events of Healing. KI, PL, TP


AN: Hehe.

Guess who's back!

After approximately six and a half months, I have returned to spread the AMAZING JOY of K/I and related pairings of wonder. And today, I write to you from the wonderful world of Cornell University… with an exam I haven't started studying for in the morning.

Ah… high school all over again :P

Sooo, anyway. Sorry for the abysmally long wait; I've been… er… adjusting to college life and trying to not be destroyed by Cornellian academics and shtuff? Hehe. Let's go with that.

This one-shot (yes, one-shot, children) is the first in a series of one-shots in this collection called Settling. Take note: this isn't the sequel to Healing. Not yet :P This is an in-between, but still in the oh-so-grand Healing-verse… whose birthday was actually on Halloween . REJOICE.

Yup. So I'll leave you guys to reading. Have fun. Review if you can; t'would be appreciated :P

* * *

A Mother's Wisdom

Momomiya Sakura had been a mother for the last thirteen years (of a beautiful young daughter, of course), and she liked to think that she had grown rather skilled in the art. She'd weathered everything from toddler's tantrums to the all-important first date, and she fancied herself well prepared for just about anything her dear Ichigo could come up with, be it crucial or girlishly trivial. Either way, she had never gone wrong, never truly faltered in her role as wise, loving mother, or had ever really expected to.

After all, she knew her daughter well; Ichigo wasn't a particularly mysterious girl. She reminded Sakura of herself as a teenager: cheerful, spunky, and rather… well, airheaded at times. Simply put: she was not complex, and Sakura loved her that way. She loved that she could wholly connect with her little girl, could perfectly understand every little twinge of emotion that entered her young life, every minute detail totally comprehensible and only serving to bond mother and daughter closer than ever before.

Take that first date, for example. Sakura couldn't remember a time she had been more amused, more excited and giddy (except maybe on her own first date with a ridiculously adorable teenage Shintaro) than the moment she heard Ichigo sigh in that soft, fluttery way that could only mean the girl had found her first love, and that day when she returned home starry-eyed and dreamy… Sakura loved her daughter so much that day, loved her for being sweet and naïve and just as tender as she had been at that blissful age of new experiences and blossoming wishes for the future.

That love had continued to grow, to sharpen, with each glimpse Sakura caught of her daughter with that charming boy, that Aoyama. Who could be more perfect? Who could be more kind, more thoughtful, more deserving of her precious Ichigo? Who could make her happier, treat her better, and protect her with greater strength and loyalty than this sheer dream of a boy?

Certainly no one she could name, and so Sakura could not say that she had been expecting this.

It was not, in her opinion, something that she could _know_ to expect, not by a long shot, not ever, and that was probably the reason the first bit of shock hit so hard when she _saw_ what had happened.

The moment she caught a glimpse of the two (obviously when _they_ thought no one was looking; silly children with no respect for a mother's shrewdness…) _looking_ at each other over dinner, she nearly dropped the bowl she had gotten up to retrieve.

All right, she knew that sounded odd. She had admitted to that the moment her eyes had widened at the sight, but it was _true_, and it was true because of the _how_. It was how they were looking at each other: with flecks of affection and tenderness in their eyes, gazes relaxed into sheer l—

Her thoughts had stopped there, stopped when Ichigo had looked up (in her own momentary alarm, for she knew her mother just as well as Sakura knew her) and asked her what was wrong. And that had been it. All of that had ended with Sakura near-stammering some silly, random excuse that probably had to do with the bowl being too hot and bringing the bowl to the table, sitting down, and continuing the meal.

But forever after that moment, Sakura had known, and as the days passed, she became more and more sure, and more and more… _confused_.

The questions plaguing her were neverending: When? How? _Why_?

The last was the loudest, the most persistent. Why this boy, with his bizarre ears and pale skin, his nail-claws and his strange eyes? Why his odd teasing, the hidden mischief Sakura never saw, but _knew_ he unleashed upon her daughter? Why this boy who feigned gentility and humility under her watchful eye, but whose cunning face hinted at a quick, sly roughness?

Why all of _this_ instead of the perfection Ichigo had had?

Such perfection constantly with her, constantly loving and devoted and pure, so quickly (_a week, we were gone…_) tossed aside for…

_Why_?

* * *

A sigh broke the room's silence, and Shintaro looked up from his paper to peer at his wife. The woman barely glanced back, resuming whatever musing she had been caught up in a second before. 

The man's curiosity (and a mild worry) peaked.

"Sakura-chan?"

Wow. No answer.

He rustled the paper a mite.

Ah, there we go. Eye contact. A smile.

"Did you say something, dear?"

They had been married too long for her feigned innocence to work on him.

"Is something on your mind?"

Ooh, here it came: her brow furrowed, her eyes clouding before she took a soft breath.

"Have you noticed anything… anything strange about Ichigo lately?" All she received was a rather blank look; she continued: "I mean, she hasn't mentioned Aoyama-kun at all…"

Again silence enveloped them as Sakura watched her husband minutely tilt his head to one side, eyes growing thoughtful before:

"Good riddance, eh?"

He grinned good-naturedly at her, and her return smile masked an inward sigh of expected disappointment.

Right. Like _he'd_ see anything in this new situation other than the absence of Aoyama. Hah.

Ah well. This was a mother's job, she supposed. Better get this done herself, without confusing Shintaro with the intricacies of teenage relationships.

That, and she hardly thought he'd appreciate having to replace the blindly happy thought of forgetting Aoyama with one of Kisshu's apparent new role… Hell, if she tried explaining this and actually got through, there might be no Kisshu _left_ for her to ponder about

A moment later, she had excused herself, insisting that she had had a tiring day and was heading to bed. The top of the stairs, however, saw her turning towards Ichigo's room and, coincidentally, the guest bedroom as well.

What she planned to accomplish, exactly, she didn't really know. After all, knocking and demanding an answer to this change in circumstance could hardly be considered intelligent. Finally reaching her daughter's door, standing rather awkwardly before it, she sighed once more, dropping her gaze to the floor, at a loss—

And suddenly alert, for there was a sound, a soft mewling, coming from behind the door, and only when it was interrupted by an equally soft "shh" did Sakura realize that Ichigo was crying, and… she blinked in mild surprise. She was here. Shintaro was downstairs. That meant this shushing was…

A sudden knot in her stomach— a twisting reminder of that _knowing_.

For all the instincts commanding her to burst into the room immediately, common sense managed a victory, and Sakura assumed the infamous listening position at Ichigo's door. For a moment, she felt a stab of guilt, for she had long ago vowed to never, ever do this to her daughter; she had lasted so long on that vow that breaking it was not only guilt-inducing, but almost cowardly.

Then she heard Ichigo sob rather loudly, and the guilt vanished as her ears trained on voices.

"You have to stop, Ichigo. They'll hear you if you don't."

"I kn-know. I know, b-but I…" Sakura's throat tightened as a few gasping, sobbing breaths filled the next few seconds.

Only a mother could understand exactly how _difficult_ just standing there was at that time. Yet Sakura did just that; she did not falter, only tilting her head slightly towards the door as the conversation picked up again.

"If they find out… no… no, now that they _have_ found out, Kisshu, they'll—"

"Koneko-chan, just because she _looked_ at you, doesn't mean she _knows_." Sakura could hear the slight laugh in his voice, that slight laugh that he always hid around them, but it didn't sound teasing. For the first time, Sakura realized that perhaps, that same sort of cunning, sly chuckle could be used for comfort, and to her astonishment, the thought manifested instantly.

"You don't know my mom."

Her daughter's voice remained thick with barely-contained tears, but there was a _smile_ there now. Sakura just knew it.

But a smile… now… with him… with_out_…

"Know her well enough to fool her, don't I?"

Sakura frowned. _Hmph, the little—_

"She knows, Kisshu. I know she does."

The woman relaxed, mollified by the sudden defeat working its way into Ichigo's voice. Oh, that hurt; to think that that alien tone was because of her, to think that she, in any small way, was causing her precious girl pain…

There was another length of silence, before:

"You really think she knows?"

"Mm…"

"Do you want to go ask her?"

"No…"

That last word conveyed so much quiet fear that Sakura bit her lip as she listened further.

"Ichigo…"

Sakura leaned just a bit closer, ears straining to catch this soft whispering.

"It doesn't matter. I won't leave you."

She stepped back, struggling to keep quiet and careful, struggling to keep a new amazement from overpowering control.

It was not amazement at his _words_, for words had the innate ability to be superficial and false, without any real way to tell which was which without intimate knowledge of the speaker (something that Sakura was, unfortunately, kind of missing). No, her awe came from the fact that he had just hugged her.

Yeah, he had hugged her.

How did Sakura know that?

Well… she didn't really.

She would have liked to have said that she had heard a faint rustling as the boy's arms wrapped around her daughter, or that she had caught a glimpse of movement through a crack between door and frame, but she'd have been lying.

The woman had seen nothing, heard nothing, and yet she _knew,_ like she knew so many things,that Kisshu's arms were currently wrapped tightly around her daughter, firm, gentle, strong and comforting and…

And that was why she stepped further back, a smile softening her features as she turned away, turned to walk down the hall to her bedroom.

He was hugging her now, and she was hugging him back, and the more Sakura acknowledged that fact, the more sense it made, all of it, from his voice to his eyes to the suddenness.

How did it make sense?

Oh, she didn't know.

Sakura shrugged lightly to herself as she turned her bedroom light on.

She didn't know, really. She had no clue how it made sense that in a simple week, Ichigo had managed to giver her heart to another. She couldn't hope to say how logic allowed this other to be so opposite, or how it managed to call up this sudden trust in her daughter.

And she certainly couldn't guess how she knew that, no matter what the doubts were, no matter what questions presented themselves with whatever persistence they could muster, there was a steady sense of right that went along with this— a sense that stemmed from a few murmured phrases and a perceived, unseen embrace…

No, she couldn't say how. Not at all. Never.

…ah, well.

Another soft smile as a youthful giggle bubbled out of her throat, for suddenly she knew that joy was the most appropriate reaction right now, no matter how unexplained.

A mother's wisdom, she supposed.

* * *

AN: Aaaaand that's it. Yea. So, go ahead and review :P You know you want to make the fact that I haven't started studying for my fantastically large exam tomorrow worthwhile. Hehe . 


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